


Second Watch

by scheherezhad



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24091777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scheherezhad/pseuds/scheherezhad
Summary: Radek is never comfortable off-world.
Relationships: Evan Lorne/Radek Zelenka
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	Second Watch

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I go back through my files and find old fic that, for one reason or another, never got posted to my ao3. This is one of those fics. Written in April of 2015, posted here in May of 2020.
> 
> Written for a "things you said" prompt, "things you said when you thought I was asleep"

Radek is never comfortable off-world. He hates the sensation of gate travel, and if he were a religious man, he would pray before stepping through each time. But he is not, so he only bites his tongue and steels himself for the nauseating dipslideshift.

It's no better at their destination, regardless of where it is. Nothing in Pegasus is welcoming and innocuous--especially if it appears to be--and he cannot help but expect danger lurking only a breath away. That and the hard ground tend to keep him up at night. He does not toss and turn, but his body has grown unused to sleeping rough in the twenty-odd years since his turn in the army.

On his second mission, he wakes from a light sleep and holds very still until he identifies what woke him.

"You'd want to paint the waterfalls," Radek hears from his left, and he takes a brief look from the corner of his eye. It's Major Lorne, directing soft words toward the stars, in roughly the direction of Earth. "And those crazy pink flowers. God, they look like something from Aunt Jamie's acid drawings. You'd like this one, Mom."

He doesn't say anything else, and a few minutes later, he wakes Lieutenant Mathers to take watch.

On Radek's seventh off-world mission, he wakes and holds himself very still.

"I think you dreamed it once," Major Lorne says.

Radek cracks his eyes open to see the Major talking toward the sky again, voice carefully low.

"It's like the children's story you wrote, with the miniature animals--who'd have thought my dad would have a psychic connection to another galaxy?" The Major huffs a small laugh. "How did it go again? 'In a yellow field, under a green, green sky, lived a tiny deer clan no taller than your thigh...'"

The Major's voice, stumbling through half-remembered poetry, soothes Radek back to sleep.

On his seventeenth off-world mission, Radek is falling in and out of consciousness after their team is attacked in the middle of the night. He surfaces and feels too much pressure in his head, hears Lorne say his name.

"Don't you dare check out on me, Doc. You're not done here yet." Then, more quietly, "I'm not done with you yet."

Radek clings to lucidity, reaches a hand up to grasp at Lorne--at Evan--and says, maybe in English, "I have only just started with you."

Evan's hand covers his own and holds tight until rescue arrives.


End file.
